Great athletes, great setting set up what's sure to be a great, and a little frightening, experience

The Olympic flame is tested Thursday in its cauldron in front of the Bolshoy Ice Dome on the Olympic Park as preparations continue for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics. The opening ceremony for the winter games will be held Feb. 7. (REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch)

About a year ago, I was assigned to cover my first Olympics this February, in a place I had scarcely heard of: Sochi, Russia. Today, I’m on the way there.

I’ve certainly heard a lot about it now, some good, some frightening, but nothing can take away from the opportunity to cover the pinnacle of sports events on the planet.

This is the culmination of a lifelong dream, an assignment that would be a feather in the cap of any sportswriter and a career achievement to be sure.

The Olympics, especially Winter Games with NHL players competing in the hockey tournament, are always something special and this one promises to be over the top for Canada.

Athletes wearing the Maple Leaf could win as many as 35 medals in Sochi and Canada could top the medal table for the first time in history.

It’s no lock, but believe it. It’s possible.

Among those medal contenders are some Manitobans.

Jennifer Jones and her women’s curling team from St. Vital are gold medal favourites. Ryan Fry of the Brad Jacobs curling team from Sault Ste. Marie is a born and bred Winnipegger who plays on a team that is taking a “gold or bust” attitude into Sochi.

Jonathan Toews of Winnipeg is one of the best players on a Canadian men’s hockey team that has struggled historically on international ice but is stacked with high-end talent and is good enough for gold.

Jocelyn Larocque of Ste. Anne is a first-time Olympian on a women’s hockey team that has never won anything less than silver and has taken the last three gold medals.

Brittany Schussler of Winnipeg could challenge for a team pursuit medal in speed skating and biathlete Megan Imrie of Falcon Lake will be looking to surprise as well.

Those are some of the athletes I’ll be keeping an extra close eye on as I take up my role as national Olympic co-ordinator for Sun Media in Sochi.

But, working with a team of multimedia journalists, both French and English from across the country, the bigger goal will be to provide all of our readers with the most comprehensive coverage available, both online and in our many newspapers across Canada.

Among the writers joining me in Sochi are Steve Simmons, who will be at his 15th Olympics, and veterans Chris Stevenson, Rob Longley and Steve Buffery along with Alain Bergeron, Rejean Tremblay and Jonathan Bernier from our Quebec papers.

Working with that group, in itself, will be an honour.

But simply getting a chance to soak up the Olympic experience — the grandeur of the Opening Ceremony, the speed of the skating oval, the luge runs, the ski hills, the tension of races that are decided by split seconds — is what I look forward to most.

Seeing the mesmerizing Black Sea sunsets and majestic snow-topped mountains of the Sochi region will be worth the trip as well. This is the most expensive Olympics in history and with that will come the most modern and convenient Olympic villages ever constructed.

Most Olympics are held in cities with existing facilities. All the facilities for these games were recently built, all in two clusters, one on the Black Sea coast in the town of Adler and one in the mountains in Krasnaya Polyana.

It will be the first Winter Olympics played in a city with palm trees, a city that is closer to Istanbul than it is to Moscow.

And of course, there’s the constant threat of terrorism. It’s real and deeply concerning.

Everyone asks me if I’m scared, I’d be crazy not to be, at least a little.

But like the athletes and all the people who work so hard to make something like this come together, I’m simply not going to let that ruin a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It’s an experience I look forward to sharing with all of you.

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